Kind of "soft link" of objects between scenes?
You can use the 2nd method, linking your object to the other scene.

Link the object to the other scene as normal. Selecting that object (the one you want to be able to rotate but still be linked) navigate to it's 'Object' tab in the 'Properties' window and make it's object datablock a single user by clicking the '2':



Alternatively, you can press U> Object to achieve the same effect, which will make any of the selected objects a single user.

Clicking the '2' makes a copy of the transformational data for the object but leaves the mesh data, the vertices and faces etc as linked, as shown in the 'data' tab:



The '2' shows that the data is now being used by 2 distinct objects, with different transformations, whereas before it was acting as a single object, sharing both transformations and data.